that
some will have a superfluity of labour, while others will suffer from
scarcity. The necessary equilibrium could then be restored by reducing
the wages in those industries where the applicants are too many and by
raising them in those where the applicants are too few, till each
branch has just the number of workers which it requires. It could be
restored also by other means; for instance, by the shortening of the
hours of labour in those industries that are short of workers. With
all that, however, the general rate of wages throughout the working
class will be influenced no longer by supply and demand, but by the
quantity of available products. A general fall of wages in consequence
of over-production will be impossible."[1241] In other words, the
beautiful schemes of remuneration independent of the laws of supply
and demand discussed in the foregoing would immediately break down. In
order to redistribute labour, workers would either have to be
compelled by direct force to work in those trades which required
additional labour, or their wages or hours of work would arbitrarily
be altered in order to effect the necessary changes by economic
pressure--that is, by reducing their food. In other words, commercial
demand and supply would break down the Utopian regulations of the
Socialist Commonwealth as soon as they had been framed.

While some Socialists wish to distribute and redistribute labour by
arbitrarily changing wages and hours of labour, some of the more
logical and scientific Socialist leaders are frankly in favour of
compulsory labour: "We already see official salaries regulated, not
according to the state of the labour market, but by consideration of
the cost of living. This principle we seek to extend to the whole
industrial world. Instead of converting every man into an independent
producer, working when he likes and as he likes, we aim at enrolling
every able-bodied person directly in the service of the community for
such duties and under such kind of organisation, local or national, as
may be suitable to his capacity and social function. If a man wants
freedom to work or not to work, just as he likes, he had better
emigrate to Robinson Crusoe's island or else become a millionaire. To
suppose that the industrial affairs of a complicated industrial State
can be run without strict subordination and discipline, without
obedience to orders, and without definite allowances for maintenance,
is to dream, not of